1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a tape printing apparatus for printing entered characters, such as letters and symbols, on a recording medium in the form of a tape, so as to obtain printed labels or the like.
2. Prior Art
Recently, small-sized tape printing apparatuses have appeared on the market, which are called label printers or label word processors and print on a recording medium in the form of a tape. Tape printing apparatuses of this kind are capable of cutting a printed portion of the recording medium to a desired length. The recording medium, in general, has an adhesive surface on the reverse side thereof, via which the printed portion cut off from the tape can be affixed to a desired location.
The tape printing apparatuses print, differently from word processors and type writers, on a tape continuous and narrow in width by means of a print head arranged at a fixed location therein by feeding the tape in one direction. Entered characters are sequentially arranged along the length of the tape to form character strings, and the character strings, in vertical writing or horizontal writing, are printed. Throughout the specification and claims appended hereto, "vertical writing" means that characters and/or symbols are arranged in a line or lines such that they should be read vertically, i.e. as a vertical character string or vertical character strings, as found in conventional Japanese or Chinese writings, while "horizontal writing" means that characters and/or symbols are arranged in a line or lines such that they should be read as a horizontal character string or horizontal character strings, as in normal English writings.
When papers or document files are systematically organized and arranged, for example, one commonly-used method is to provide indexes in the form of tabs (hereinafter referred to as "index tabs") on the papers or document files in a fashion protruded therefrom so as to facilitate search of them for a paper or file in need. Each index can be provided by preparing a pair of labels having the same length and printed with the same contents, and attaching the labels to a paper itself to form a tab or to the surfaces of a tab formed on a file, such that the labels are attached back to back, to thereby permit the printed portions to be read from either side of the paper or file.
When the conventional tape printing apparatuses are used to form such labels for making index tabs, however, it is required to form a pair of labels having the same length and printed with the same contents and paste or stick them back to back. This requires labor of printing a pair of separate labels and pasting or sticking them to each other.
On the other hand, the main use of the tape printing apparatus is to form a general-purpose label, so that it is not necessarily required to print characters in a transverse direction of the tape. Therefore, the conventional tape printing apparatus are not capable of, for example, forming a label having a top portion printed with a postal code in horizontal writing which extends in the horizontal direction of the tape, and a lower portion printed with an address and a name in vertical writing which extend in the longitudinal direction of the tape. Further, it is also impossible for the conventional apparatuses to print a composition of a number of lines in vertical writing each formed by a relatively small number of letters, such as lyric lines, haiku (Japanese poem in shortest-form), and waka (Japanese poem in short-form), on a single label. To form a label printed with such contents, it is required to prepare a plurality of labels separately, and then paste or stick them to a desired place while accurately positioning them into a desired form.